| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district,
a pretty girl.
None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins.
The philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor,
puzzled over it.
When a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street,
dirt disguised her. Attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen.
There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity
said: "Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker." About this period
her brother remarked to her: "Mag, I'll tell yeh dis! See?
Yeh've edder got teh go teh hell or go teh work!" Whereupon she
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: why. He was perfectly open about it. He looked on the King's
action as a heathen attempt to curry favour with the Christians'
God through me the Archbishop, and he would have none of it.
'"My dear man," I said, "admitting that that is the case, surely
you, as an educated person, don't believe in Wotan and all the
other hobgoblins any more than Padda here?" The old seal was
hunched up on his ox-hide behind his master's chair.
'"Even if I don't," he said, "why should I insult the memory of
my fathers' Gods? I have sent you a hundred and three of my
rascals to christen. Isn't that enough?"
'"By no means," I answered. "I want you."
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: citizens?' (Compare Meno.) 'All men everywhere.' But how absurd, how
contrary to analogy is this! How inconceivable too, that he should make
the citizens worse when he has to live with them. This surely cannot be
intentional; and if unintentional, he ought to have been instructed by
Meletus, and not accused in the court.
But there is another part of the indictment which says that he teaches men
not to receive the gods whom the city receives, and has other new gods.
'Is that the way in which he is supposed to corrupt the youth?' 'Yes, it
is.' 'Has he only new gods, or none at all?' 'None at all.' 'What, not
even the sun and moon?' 'No; why, he says that the sun is a stone, and the
moon earth.' That, replies Socrates, is the old confusion about
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: And the mother in turn cried. "Don't abandon us, sir! You ought
to make allowances! If you knew what that child is to me! I
tell you it seems to me as if I had waited for her coming in
order to die. Have pity upon us! Have pity upon her! You speak
of the weakest--it is not she who is the weakest? You have seen
her, you have seen that poor little baby, so emaciated! You have
seen what a heap of suffering she is already; and cannot that
inspire in you any sympathy? I pray you, sir--I pray you!"
"I pity her," said the doctor, "I would like to save her--and I
will do everything for her. But do not ask me to sacrifice to a
feeble infant, with an uncertain and probably unhappy life, the
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